The Movement of a Hand

As the constant heat of summer blurs the line between day and night, old memories drift up on the heat waves from the sidewalk.

When I was a child, maybe seven or eight, I watched a documentary on the string theory. I was utterly enthralled. I didn’t understand about eighty percent of what the voice-over was saying but on the screen there were these beautiful, hair-thin strands of color, weaving themselves into circles that seemed to glow against the dimmed background. They floated around, rippling so lightly, like heat waves or magic, or the edges of some little light-ghost. I reached out and touched the screen, my fingers brushing one of the colorful circles. I wanted one for a pet. I thought the concept was amazing. I was fascinated because I thought that all those scientists in their nice white coats meant that there might be other dimensions, see, right here around us, which I took to mean that those beautiful, shimmering little rings were floating everywhere, all around me; I just couldn’t see them. I waved my hand slowly through the air in front of me, wondering how many of the glowing coils I may have unknowingly touched. How many I must touch whenever I move anywhere at all. For days I imagined them everywhere, trying to catch them, as if they were the ghosts of all the butterflies that winter had killed. By the obvious misinterpretation of a science documentary, I was happily lost in a new little magic world. You know, the little worlds, the brief obsessions where you’re so excited about it but you’re back in time for dinner, and the little world is left to rust and mold like a bicycle forgotten in the yard. Back to the real world.

And, the real world can be a horrible, evil, disgusting place. Not the world itself I suppose, but what is in it. Who is in it. Some beautiful sick magnificent vile fallen angel who puts it in people’s heads to rape and murder and molest children and lie and manipulate and destroy. This seems beyond human nature; beyond rebellion and lost sheep. It is beyond illness, natural disaster, loss, death by natural causes. There are bad things; there are tragic things. And then there are evil things; cruel things. Something with extra-special foulness; something that was poisoned, not just “gone bad”. It bubbles up, fumes oozing from the ground and we breathe it in; we smell it, taste it, see it when it’s thick enough. And it is so confusing, because there’s beauty too, but it gets all tainted by the smog. I have such a headache, trying to see through it to what is real; to the organic, original things designed by God. To the way things should be. Maybe if I held my breath, or wore a gas mask out into the world I wouldn’t be choked by it. Retching gasping suffocating, vomiting up everything in me that might have been light; that might have been joy or innocence. The stench has made me throw it all up again—violently; acidic and projectile—and I am empty, empty for a reason. Just one good reason for this, and something—anything—untainted.

Maybe I’m just being dramatic, but tonight even my dog seems touched by the evil smog, as though even he is burdened and forced to labor by this toxin. Maybe I left the window open, let it in somehow. He’s tired, he lays with his head between his paws, his shoulders hunched around him and his eyes subtly keeping track of any nearby motion. Lying down, but awake, weary and brooding. His fur is all scruffy and spiked; he’s just come in from the rain. It this pose he looks hard—-cold and bittered by time. My tired, stoic wolfdog. We curl up in bed together, two cynical creatures. Or so I'd like to fancy.

Sometimes I want to ask him if he loves me, though I know that isn’t a question that commonly needs to be asked of dogs. They show it so plainly, even pitifully, in their faces and tails; in their liquid-pool eyes and warm pink tongues. They show such blind and unconditional love that I can’t help but think that they must not be very smart. I tell them, “I don’t deserve to be loved that way, you know. I’ve done bad things.” But they just keep grinning, their entire bodies swaying from the force of their enthusiastic tail. In this mood, though, I think perhaps Caspian may form a more accurate opinion. He groans as I lean on his shoulder and stretches out his back legs, kicking me. That’s more like it, I think, but then his tail thumps softly on the mattress and I know he didn’t mean it. He still thinks I’m better than I am; thinks the world is a better place than it is.
He doesn’t see the quivering state of things; of just a thing or two that could cause a landslide. He doesn’t see that elaborate spiral of dominos, the first one teetering on its edge and how, with just the movement of a hand, we could see it all collapse.

The other night I dreamed that it was dark. Dark as if my room had no windows; dark so that open-closed-open-closed-open-closed my eyes could see no difference. I waved my hand in front of my face. I thought my eyes, my silly eyes might be playing tricks. I felt the stir of the air on my face, but saw nothing. No tricks; just dark. It didn’t make any difference.